Johann Joseph Fux

Johann Joseph Fux (German: [ˈjoːhan ˈjoːzɛf ˈfʊks]; c. 1660 – 13 February 1741) was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era. His most enduring work is not a musical composition but his treatise on counterpoint, Gradus ad Parnassum, which has become the single most influential book on the Palestrinian style of Renaissance polyphony.

Fux's exact date of birth is unknown. He was born to a peasant family in Hirtenfeld, Styria, Austria. Relatively little is known about his early life, but likely he went to nearby Graz for music lessons. In 1680 he was accepted at the Jesuit Ferdinandeum University there, where his musical talent became apparent. From 1685 until 1688 he served as organist at St. Moritz in Ingolstadt. Sometime during this period he must have made a trip to Italy, as evidenced by the strong influence of Corelli and Bolognese composers on his work of the time.

By the 1690s he was in Vienna, and attracted the attention of Emperor Leopold I with some masses he composed; the emperor was sufficiently impressed by them to assist him with his career after this point. In 1698, Leopold hired him as court composer. Fux traveled again to Italy, studying in Rome in 1700; it may have been here that he acquired the veneration for Palestrina which was so consequential for music pedagogy.

Fux became the Hofkapellmeister (head musician of the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle) in 1715, along with Antonio Caldara as his vice-Kapellmeister, and F.B. Conti as the court composer.

Fux served Leopold I until the latter's death, and two more Habsburg emperors after that: Joseph I, and Charles VI, both of whom continued to employ him in high positions in the court. Fux was famous as a composer throughout this period, and stood out among his contemporaries as the highest ranking composer in the Holy Roman Empire. However, this renown gradually became eclipsed later in the 18th century as the Baroque style died out. Although his music until recently never regained favor, his mastery of counterpoint influenced countless composers through his treatise Gradus ad Parnassum (1725). Haydn largely taught himself counterpoint by reading it and recommended it to the young Beethoven. Mozart had a copy of it that he annotated.

The Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps or Ascent to Mount Parnassus) is a theoretical and pedagogical work written by Fux in Latin in 1725, and translated into German by Lorenz Christoph Mizler in 1742. Fux dedicated it to Emperor Charles VI.

The work is divided into two major parts. In the first part, Fux presents a summary of the theory on Musica Speculativa, or the analysis of intervals as proportions between numbers. This section is in a simple lecture style, and looks at music from a purely mathematical angle, in a theoretical tradition that goes back, through the works of Renaissance theoreticians, to the Ancient Greeks. Fux explains that intervals in exact mathematical proportions result in larger and smaller half tones, and he also mentions that some organists added extra keys (split halves to use smaller and bigger half tones), but that adding extra keys on a keyboard was problematic and for this reason they divided every note in "zwei gleiche Theile" (two equal parts), resulting in equal temperament. He continues:

Da man aber erfahren, daß solches in Zahlen nicht angeht, ist das Ohr zu hülfe genommen worden, indem man von dem einem Theil einem fast gar nicht mercklichen Theil weggenommen, und dem andern zugesetzet.
[Because experience told us that one cannot do this by means of figures, the ear was called in to help, by taking away an almost non-detectable amount from one note and adding it to the others.]